


Double-Edge

by PoorYorick



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Assets & Handlers, Body Modification, Dehumanization, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Torture, Surgery Mention, read it as whatever you like, this is not sexually or anything just creepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28205532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorYorick/pseuds/PoorYorick
Summary: Sometimes all the torture, programming, and brain-wiping in the world is not enough to turn this husk of a man into a good little soldier. Sometimes it takes...hope. And Hydra has a recipe for that too.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28





	Double-Edge

People had always told him that he was handsome. Everyone had said so - but nothing had prepared him for the appreciative looks his new face earned him. Almost worth the strange tingling sensation of the Botox and the slowly-fading ache where his bones were re-setting. The women liked it, anyway. Lots of guys did too. 

The blond hair took some getting used to but he had to admit that they framed this face better than his natural red. 

After all, it was Captain America who was looking back at him from the mirror every day. Hero. Saviour. Legend. He'd seen him in films, as a child. Read the comics. And one time, when he was nine years old and the war had been over, his Mum had let him dress up as Captain America for a friend's birthday. Little had he known then that one day, the costume would be cut into stone - well, _bone_ \- and moulded onto his face.

This was the first time he put on the blue, red and white uniform that Hydra had provided, satisfied with the accuracy of their measurements even if it meant that he'd probably not be allowed to gain or lose a single gram of fat for the rest of his career. 

Next to the sink in the small changing stall stood a bottle of cologne, a near-perfect reconstruction of the cologne Steve Rogers had used back in the day which was no longer produced. 98 out of 100 couldn’t tell the difference. 

Foregoing both the fake tin shield and the mask, he finished the ensemble off with a pair of leather gloves. 

He practised a few lines in the Brooklyn-accent he’d been training for the last few months and furrowed his brow gently in the way he’d seen the Captain do in the old footage before he and his mirror-self nodded at each other, satisfied with the other's performance. This should be enough to fool Roger’s own mother if she were still alive - not to mention a drugged, catatonic assassin with memory loss. 

A fist rapped against the door. 

“I hope you’re ready for the ball, Steve. Your prince is waiting.” 

“Fuck you,” He said - and mirror-Cap mouthed along, “Honestly, fuck you.” 

He’d forgotten to drop the false accent and his answer earned him nothing but a snicker. 

When he opened the door, he couldn’t even glare Harriet down. It was hard to maintain dignity dressed like this. 

“Any changes?” He asked as he followed her down the corridor, trying to ignore the sense of dread coiling inside his stomach. He’d been trained for this. He could do this. 

“If there were, we wouldn’t need you,” She said, shrugging. “You have twenty-four hours.” 

He stopped 

“What?! I told them – I _told_ them they can’t just do this. This might take  _ weeks _ .” 

“You’ve got twenty-four hours. High Command wants the ambassador dead before he can reach the opera house.” 

He cursed in a way that Captain America had probably never cursed in his lifetime. 

* * *

The asset was kept in a small holding cell adjoining the room where the chair and the cryo-tank stood, but no one had bothered locking the door. The asset hadn’t moved in almost a week. The only nourishment came through IV-needles pushed into its wrists or a tube forced down its unresisting throat once a day. Not even an attempt at starving. Not even attempt at escaping its miserable existence through death. Just...emptiness. 

It never so much as looked up from where it was lying on the floor, exactly where the men had dropped it a few hours ago. If it hadn’t been for the rise of fall of its chest and the rare blink of its blank eyes, it might as well have been dead. 

It didn’t react to his arrival. its line of sight was fixed on the wall next to the door. 

He wondered whether it felt the bruises and burns covering its body or the bleeding cuts and lashes that formed a web across its skin or whether it was too far gone. He’d watched it all on camera; all their attempts to bring it back from wherever it had gone. It hadn’t even batted an eye when they ripped out its fingernails. 

There was nothing they hadn’t already done to it – if they wanted it functional the next day, they needed a miracle. He wondered if maybe that was the problem. At some point the asset had been a person and even with its humanity stripped away, there was only so much a human body and mind could bear. There was a limit. A candle needed air to keep its flame alive and maybe humans needed something like that as well. Some invisible nourishment. Or, after short or long, the lights went out.

“Soldier?” He asked, doing his best to imitate the exact timbre of the voice he’d spent the last months studying. The first impression could decide this. 

The asset didn’t react, glassy eyes still looking at – and through – the wall of its cell. Its mouth stood slightly open and for the first time, he noticed how soft it lips looked. Hadn't seen that on camera. It was…unexpected, in a weapon. 

Ignoring the stench of blood and sweat, he stepped closer. He had expected to at least see the muscles in the asset’s back tense like they usually did when someone approached it, but there was nothing. If the guys from maintenance hadn’t already checked he might have assumed that it had suffered brain damage during cryo, but aside from the old scarring of the frontal lobe from the wipes, its head was just as empty as it had been the last time someone had gotten it out. 

He approached, carefully seating himself on the ground across from the defective machine. Not that anyone would ever make such an effort for a jammed sub-machine. They’d throw it out and get a new one. Maybe that’s what they should do. Maybe the asset had simply expired and it was time for a new Winter Soldier. But even if it was, he’d take the brunt of it if the asset wasn't ready to take out the ambassador tomorrow. 

Slowly, he reached out, his hand in the line of the asset’s blank eyes, and reached for the greasy black hair and traced a gentle finger along its scalp. When the asset still didn’t react, he couldn’t help feeling ridiculous. 

He tried to recall some of the details he had read in the reports and interviews of people who’d actually known Captain American and Bucky Barnes before their deaths. Most of them had been dull, but it was expected reading and he knew better than to slack on Hydra duties. 

„Hey, buddy.“ He tried, trying to reach whatever remains of Barnes were still floating around the asset’s empty head. A jump start, if you will. They would have to wipe it again, of course. But it was a spark to get the proverbial candle back on. 

It still didn’t react, but the lack of having his eyeballs plucked out by a soulless, undead soldier mixed with the rhythmic sensation of petting of its hair, he was growing more confident. He didn't seem in immediate danger of having his spine ripped out of his body. The weight of the taser in his left pocket added to his feeling of safety. It had been decades since the last time the asset had snapped and broken someone’s neck. Or...that's what they said, anyway.

Stretching out his legs before him, he reached under the asset’s limp body and heaved its head into his lap. It was exactly as heavy as it looked with its metal arm, but it didn’t resist and didn’t seem to care that now it was looking at him and the ceiling instead of the wall it had stared at. If it had even noticed. 

“I missed you,” He said, adding some fake warmth to his voice and tutted almost maternally when he brushed the hair out of the asset’s face. "So much." 

He thought he saw one nostril twitch. 

“I was always so proud of you, you know? You were the best asset I ever had.” 

There was no answer, but this time he was sure that he’d seen the asset breathing in a little deeper. He remembered how he’d been taught in one of his lessons that the oldest and deepest human sense is the sense of smell and it was the most likely to reconnect to seemingly lost memories. 

He rearranged its head a little to make sure it got a good whiff of his cologne.

“You don’t want to disappoint me, do you? Do you want to make me sad?” 

The faintest ripple went through the muscles in the asset’s neck that was resting against his thighs when it leant into the caresses of his hand. The blue eyes were still directed at the ceiling, unfocused and empty, but a faint line had formed between them as if in whatever dimension the asset had gone to, it was solving a difficult equation. 

Rubbing his thumb along the asset’s jaw, he wondered whether they’d ever tried this before. If they had ever tried reaching it in any other way but by beating it into submission. Something resembling a sigh escaped its throat and if the widening of its dead eyes was any indication, it was at least as surprised by the sound as he was. 

He didn’t know how long he sat there, whispering nonsense and caressing the asset’s filthy hair (maybe the handlers were just too scared to approach it with scissors in their hands). One of its hands curled into the fabric of his uniform, gently clenching the material as if it was scared he’d disappear if it held on too tight. The Winter Soldier shouldn’t be scared. He’d seen footage of the asset walking into burning buildings and jumping out of his planes. Weapons don’t get scared. 

Suddenly, he noticed that the lips of the asset were moving. 

Weapons don’t speak unless spoken to. 

He had to bend down to hear the words. 

“Help me…” 

The same two words, over and over... 

“Steve, please. Please help me…Steve…please...”

He stood up, the asset rolling off his lap but sitting upright now, looking after him with shock written in its blue eyes. Empty, still, but no longer unfocussed. The jump-start had worked. 

"Steve."

“It’s back.” He reported into the microphone attached to his collar. “I repeat: The asset is back.” 

**Author's Note:**

> So. How...did you like it? 
> 
> find me under: langernameohnebedeutung.tumblr.com


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